"IS ANYBODY PAYING ATTENTION?" The mindful view of an educated Buddhist blogger who uses critical thinking, evidence, facts, and investigation to come up with his opinions instead of fear based ideologies.

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Another Day of WTF? Christmas and Holidays

'Tis the season to be merry, fight with each other over parking, sales items, popular kids toys, crowds in line at every mall store, and people who buy themselves clothes, sleep apparel, bathrobes, etc. I made the mistake of going into KMart today, after going to breakfast and morning study with my friend Steve L. Mostly we (both of us are Western style Buddhists) discuss a) the way the nation's politics are going in comparison to the eightfold path, b) who said the stupidest thing this week on the news, and c) art projects either of us are working on, including writing. Today we discussed lots of things including conservatism and the American Taliban leaders like Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum that only want to control us. That is why they want to replace the constitution with the bigleYesterday I answered a question on the atheist forum at about.com. The question was, "Do you think most atheists become liberal?"
You can read my response at : http://atheism.about.com/u/ua/Atheist-Agnostic-Belief-Survey/Why-Atheists-Agnostics-Liberal.htm , but the gist of it was that I don't believe that Atheists become liberal, I believe that if you are open to new things (as is the definition of liberal http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/liberal?s=t ), then, (as Buddhist teachings discuss, calling it attachment to views) you would become atheistic. This might confuse some people because I talk about being Buddhist, but Buddhism is an atheistic religion that doesn't say that you aren't allowed to believe in a higher power but it has nothing to do with the study of the religion. I believe that most people who are "liberal minded" (favorable to progress or reform, as in political or religious affairs.) people eventually learn enough about science to know that some things in the bible are physically (literally in terms of physics) impossible and were supposed to be a parable to teach us a lesson about how to treat other people and we can only assume that people that take every piece of literature which is based on bronze age mythology (like every religion is), then you have to not take it all literally. If you have ever met someone who takes the bible or any other religious text literally, then you know what I have experienced with some people. They are self deluded and resistant to any form of education about the truth.
Now, the other thing that came up and this is very important is that Steve feels that they Military Industrial Complex, via the Pentagon, have become like a fourth branch of government so they can control the money in Washington, D.C. He pointed out that our recent spying done by the NSA is all part of the situation. The reason being that now the NSA is like a branch of the Pentagon. Why is that? This is their new supervisor.
I looked him up on Wikipedia and found this information: "...Keith Brian Alexander (born December 2, 1951) is a four-star general in the United States Army who currently serves as Director of the National Security Agency(DIRNSA), Chief of the Central Security Service (CHCSS) and Commander of the United States Cyber Command. He previously served as Deputy Chief of Staff, G-2, U.S. Army from 2003 to 2005. He assumed the positions of Director, National Security Agency and Chief, Central Security Service on August 1, 2005 and the additional duties as Commander, United States Cyber Command on May 21, 2010.On 16 October 2013, it was announced that General Alexander, and his Deputy John C. Inglis, were leaving the NSA. This announcement came on the heels of four months of NSA spying revelations spawned by press-leaks made by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. "
This is not something that inspires confidence in the U.S. military and the government police agencies. We recently found out that the NSA is reading every email and listening to ever phone call in the USA but hasn't thwarted a single solitary terrorist attack. They originally tried to say they could name one but that turned out to be a humbug so they dropped it. I don't care what party you are in, this should be a concern. The military industrial complex isn't supposed to be in charge of the largest, most secretive government police agency in the country, but now they are. This gives way too much influence to the defense department that we need to slim down and the reason it has gotten to be such a huge mega-monster of financial waste is "because they can" because no one wants to be scrutinized by the NSA.
Imagine if we, as centrists that the regressives call "liberals" acted shamefully suspicious about this information and fed it to the paranoids in the Tea Party, the Libertarian Party, CATO institute, Freedom Works, and the Koch brothers. If we sell it to them as a tool to "blame Obama" for, they would accidentally expose all those warhawks and their cronies that they keep voting for.
Are you ready to start some real shit? Start going on the Tea Party Patriots and American Libertarian sites and handing them this information. Let's send it to Fox News and the entire News Troll circuit (Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, Alex Jones, etc.) so they can have themselves a merry little New Year of Obama hate while exposing the one thing we don't want in our government. Who's with me?

About Me

I am an Arizona native, born and raised in Phoenix, although I have lived for brief times in other places. I am what one would call a Centrist. I don't believe in radical left or right stances and refuse to let the low information, regressive, right wing people call me "liberal" since that would be left of reality based on opinion, and I believe in facts and research of evidence.